Article
Environmental Sciences
Aleh Meshyk, Maryna Barushka, Viktoryia Marozava
Summary: There are differences in snow cover characteristics between Belarus and neighboring countries, with variations in snow water equivalent related to altitude, year, and region. Snow water equivalent shows cyclic changes and correlates with current climate fluctuations. There is a trend of decreasing snow water equivalent in certain parts of Belarus, while meltwater and river runoff data support the findings.
ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE AND POLLUTION RESEARCH
(2021)
Article
Geosciences, Multidisciplinary
Aitor Orio-Alonso, Esteban Alonso-Gonzalez, Carlos Diez-Gonzalez, Pablo Gomez-Garcia, Pablo Martinez-Ruiz del Arbol
Summary: Despite challenges in real-time monitoring of snowpack, this study explores the potential of a new technology, Muon Scattering Radiography, to estimate Snow Water Equivalent (SWE). By combining SNOWPACK model simulations with a muon scattering simulation program, predictions of SWE with a root-mean-square error of 12 mm for 5 hr continuous measurements are provided. Laboratory measurements using ice samples confirm the SWE estimation capabilities and the potential of the technique as a monitoring tool.
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS
(2023)
Article
Environmental Sciences
Ross T. Palomaki, Eric A. Sproles
Summary: Snow water equivalent (SWE) is a critical input for weather, climate, and water resource management models. The accuracy and consistency of global SWE measurements are currently limited, and previous research on L-band InSAR-SWE measurement has focused on mountain or tundra snowpacks. This study examines the feasibility of applying the same techniques over a prairie snowpack and highlights the need for further work to improve SWE estimation accuracy.
REMOTE SENSING OF ENVIRONMENT
(2023)
Article
Environmental Sciences
Ioanna Merkouriadi, Juha Lemmetyinen, Glen E. Liston, Jouni Pulliainen
Summary: This study examines the challenges of assimilating active and passive microwave signatures with physical snow models, showing that critical challenges exist due to the physical relationship between SWE and snow microstructure. Through sensitivity experiments, it is demonstrated that these challenges can be overcome if microwave algorithms account for these relationships.
WATER RESOURCES RESEARCH
(2021)
Article
Environmental Sciences
Randall Bonnell, Daniel McGrath, Keith Williams, Ryan Webb, Steven R. Fassnacht, Hans-Peter Marshall
Summary: Radar instruments are widely used for measuring snow water equivalent (SWE), with Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar being a promising method from spaceborne platforms. Velocity estimates are a significant source of uncertainty in radar SWE retrievals, especially in wet snow where velocity is influenced by snow density and liquid water content (LWC). Utilizing ground-penetrating radar, researchers measured snow depths, density, and estimated SWE and LWC values, showing that LWC variability is key in accurately measuring SWE for future radar missions.
Article
Geosciences, Multidisciplinary
Yufei Liu, Yiwen Fang, Dongyue Li, Steven A. Margulis
Summary: This study examined eight global snow products in High Mountain Asia and found that there was an average underestimation of 33% in peak annual snow storage. The variability in cumulative snowfall explained the majority of the uncertainty in peak snow storage.
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS
(2022)
Article
Geochemistry & Geophysics
Akshay Patil, Gulab Singh, Christoph Rudiger, Shradha Mohanty, Sanjeev Kumar, Snehmani
Summary: This study proposes an algorithm for snow depth and snow water equivalent retrieval based on a polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (SAR) decomposition model and field measured data. The algorithm was validated through field campaigns in the Indian Himalaya, showing promising accuracy for both snow depth and snow water equivalent.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON GEOSCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING
(2021)
Article
Environmental Sciences
Rolf Ole R. Jenssen, Svein K. Jacobsen
Summary: This paper presents a method for remotely estimating snow water equivalent (SWE) using UAV-mounted radar and initial field experiments show high repeatability and good agreement with simulations. System improvements are outlined to increase the accuracy of the snow density estimator based on F-K migration technique.
Article
Biodiversity Conservation
Jie-Yuan Kan, Teng-Fei Li, Ming Xu, Ren-Ying Zhang, Zi-Xuan Wang, Yu-Xi Feng
Summary: The study estimates the impacts of wildfires on snow accumulation and retention in the San Joaquin watershed by analyzing the spatiotemporal visual variations in the snow water equivalent (SWE) from 2000 to 2016. The results show that wildfires have significantly increased the speed of snowmelt and shortened the timing of water availability, potentially leading to water resource shortages. Furthermore, the frequency of wildfires in recent years is much higher than in the past twenty years, and there is a strong positive correlation between fire severity and SWE values.
ECOLOGICAL INDICATORS
(2023)
Article
Engineering, Environmental
Mohammad Reza Goodarzi, Maryam Sabaghzadeh, Mohammad Hossein Mokhtari
Summary: The study utilized Google Earth Engine to investigate the impact of elevation and aspect on snow depth, snow water equivalent, and other parameters. It found a correlation of above 0.9 between snow depth and snow water equivalent, and observed an increase in snow depth and water equivalent on southern slopes with increasing altitude compared to northern slopes.
COLD REGIONS SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
(2022)
Article
Water Resources
Ahmad Hasan Nury, Ashish Sharma, Lucy Marshall, Ian Cordery
Summary: Understanding the hydrological processes in the Tibetan Plateau is crucial due to the demand for freshwater downstream. However, the limited information makes it challenging to develop a hydrological model that characterizes future streamflow. This study proposes a flexible conceptual hydrological model based on remote sensing data, which can simulate dynamically varying snow cover fraction, snow water equivalent, and streamflow.
HYDROLOGICAL SCIENCES JOURNAL
(2022)
Article
Environmental Sciences
Mohamed Wassim Baba, Abdelghani Boudhar, Simon Gascoin, Lahoucine Hanich, Ahmed Marchane, Abdelghani Chehbouni
Summary: The study assessed the performance of ERA5 and MERRA-2 climate reanalysis in calculating the spatial distribution of snow water equivalent in the High Atlas range in Morocco, and found that both models can effectively reproduce the snowpack state, with ERA5 having a lower bias in performance.
Article
Environmental Sciences
Heather Kropp, Michael M. Loranty, Nick Rutter, Christopher G. Fletcher, Chris Derksen, Lawrence Mudryk, Markus Todt
Summary: The timing and rate of spring snowmelt in northern high latitudes are important for the environment. Forests and grasslands are more conducive to snowmelt compared to other land cover types.
ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH LETTERS
(2022)
Article
Geography, Physical
Rebecca Gugerli, Darin Desilets, Nadine Salzmann
Summary: This study explores the use of muon counts to monitor the snow water equivalent (SWE) in high mountain regions. The results show that the muonic cosmic ray snow gauge (mu-CRSG) measurements agree with the neutronic cosmic ray snow gauge (n-CRSG) measurements and are within the uncertainty of manual observations. The mu-CRSG is a highly promising method to monitor SWE in remote high mountain environments with several advantages over the n-CRSG.
Article
Environmental Sciences
Lina Zschenderlein, Kari Luojus, Matias Takala, Pinja Venalainen, Jouni Pulliainen
Summary: The detection of (dry) snow using passive microwave remote sensing has important applications, but commonly used algorithms tend to underestimate snow cover extent. This study assesses six dry snow detection algorithms and finds that cumulative snow masks show the best performance, offering a solution to the underestimation issue.
REMOTE SENSING OF ENVIRONMENT
(2023)
Article
Geochemistry & Geophysics
Ardeshir Ebtehaj, Michael Durand, Marco Tedesco
Summary: This article presents a new algorithmic framework for multilayer inversion of the dense media radiative transfer (DMRT) equations of snowpack emission, focusing on high-frequency microwave channels above 60 GHz. The algorithm successfully retrieves the depth, density, and grain size of a single-layer snowpack, as well as the depth and water equivalent of seasonal snow under specific conditions.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON GEOSCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING
(2022)
Article
Geochemistry & Geophysics
Caglar Yardim, Joel T. Johnson, Kenneth C. Jezek, Mark J. Andrews, Michael Durand, Yuna Duan, Shurun Tan, Leung Tsang, Marco Brogioni, Giovanni Macelloni, Alexandra Bringer
Summary: Ice sheet subsurface temperature is crucial for understanding glacier dynamics. However, current methods of obtaining ice sheet temperature are limited to in situ sources. A new technology called ultrawideband software-defined microwave radiometer (UWBRAD) has been developed to remotely sense ice sheet internal temperatures.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON GEOSCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING
(2022)
Article
Environmental Sciences
Xiao Yang, Tamlin M. Pavelsky, Matthew R. Ross, Stephanie R. Januchowski-Hartley, Wayana Dolan, Elizabeth H. Altenau, Michael Belanger, Danesha Byron, Michael Durand, Ian Van Dusen, Hailey Galit, Michiel Jorissen, Theodore Langhorst, Eric Lawton, Riley Lynch, Katie Ann Mcquillan, Sayali Pawar, Aaron Whittemore
Summary: People have built various obstructions in rivers for different purposes, but due to the long and complex history of construction and removal, there is a lack of consistent global record. By using a consistent method and high-resolution images, a Global River Obstruction Database was established, recording different types of obstructions, with high classification consistency for obstructions fully intersecting rivers but lower consistency for partial obstructions.
WATER RESOURCES RESEARCH
(2022)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Demian D. Gomez, Michael G. Bevis, Robert Smalley, Michael Durand, Michael J. Willis, Dana J. Caccamise, Eric Kendrick, Pedro Skvarca, Franco S. Sobrero, Hector Parra, Gino Casassa
Summary: The Patagonia Icefields are the largest non-polar ice masses in the southern hemisphere. The response of these icefields to climate drivers such as El Nino-Southern Oscillation is not well understood. Using GPS data and elastic response of the earth, researchers estimated that during the strong El Nino event in 2015, the northern icefield lost around 28 Gt of mass while the southern icefield lost around 12 Gt, making it the largest ice loss event observed in the Patagonia Icefields using geodetic data.
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
(2022)
Article
Geosciences, Multidisciplinary
Stephen Coss, Michael T. T. Durand, C. K. Shum, Yuchan Yi, Xiao Yang, Tamlin Pavelsky, Augusto Getirana, Dai Yamazaki
Summary: River channels play a crucial role in storing large volumes of water globally, affecting ecological and biogeochemical processes. However, there is currently no observational constraint on the quantity of water stored in river channels. This study introduces a 26-year record of remotely sensed volumetric channel water storage (CWS) change on 26 major rivers worldwide, revealing the significant contribution of mainstem CWS climatology amplitude to terrestrial water storage variability in basins.
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS
(2023)
Article
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
Renato Prata de Moraes Frasson, Michael J. Turmon, Michael T. Durand, Cedric H. David
Summary: The Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission will provide estimates of discharge in wide rivers, which fills an important gap in current in situ measurements. Understanding the uncertainty and error sources in SWOT estimates is crucial to its potential in advancing our knowledge of Earth's water cycle. A Monte Carlo simulation study reveals the importance of parameter biases and observation errors in discharge estimation.
JOURNAL OF HYDROMETEOROLOGY
(2023)
Article
Environmental Sciences
Ryan M. Riggs, George H. Allen, Jida Wang, Tamlin M. Pavelsky, Colin J. Gleason, Cedric H. David, Michael Durand
Summary: Long-term, continuous, and real-time streamflow records are crucial for understanding and managing freshwater resources. However, a significant portion of global gauge records are discontinuous and lack real-time data. To fill in the gaps, river width observations from satellite imagery have been used to estimate daily discharge at over 2000 gauge locations worldwide. This method improves our ability to monitor and manage river resources.
ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH LETTERS
(2023)
Article
Environmental Sciences
David Bjerklie, Michael Durand, James Lenoir, Robert W. Dudley, Charon Birkett, John W. Jones, Merritt Harlan
Summary: This research evaluates the accuracy and uncertainty of river discharge estimates using satellite observed data with a modified form of Manning's equation. Ground-truth data from USGS gage sites were used to assess accuracy. The study finds that remotely sensed discharge estimates may have an uncertainty of 10% overall with sufficient calibration points, but the uncertainty increases for shallow rivers and low discharge.
JOURNAL OF APPLIED REMOTE SENSING
(2023)
Article
Environmental Sciences
Michael Durand, Colin J. Gleason, Tamlin M. Pavelsky, Renato Prata de Moraes Frasson, Michael Turmon, Cedric H. David, Elizabeth H. Altenau, Nikki Tebaldi, Kevin Larnier, Jerome Monnier, Pierre Olivier Malaterre, Hind Oubanas, George H. Allen, Brian Astifan, Craig Brinkerhoff, Paul D. Bates, David Bjerklie, Stephen Coss, Robert Dudley, Luciana Fenoglio, Pierre-Andre Garambois, Augusto Getirana, Peirong Lin, Steven A. Margulis, Pascal Matte, J. Toby Minear, Aggrey Muhebwa, Ming Pan, Daniel Peters, Ryan Riggs, Md Safat Sikder, Travis Simmons, Cassie Stuurman, Jay Taneja, Angelica Tarpanelli, Kerstin Schulze, Mohammad J. Tourian, Jida Wang
Summary: The Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission will expand global river measurements, providing new data sets for both gaged and ungaged basins. SWOT discharge will be computed from measurements of water elevation, width, and slope, and is expected to have an accuracy of less than 30%, with systematic bias as the dominant uncertainty component.
WATER RESOURCES RESEARCH
(2023)
Article
Geosciences, Multidisciplinary
Jessica D. Lundquist, Rhae Sung Kim, Michael Durand, Laura R. Prugh
Summary: SNOwpack TELemetry observations and model simulations have shown that early season snowfall contributes significantly to peak snow accumulation in North America, especially in higher latitudes and colder locations. This is due to colder temperatures and storm tracks focusing further north in the early season. Early season snow observations can be used to predict peak snow water equivalent in locations influenced by large-scale ocean-atmosphere patterns and in northern maritime locations where rain on snow and midwinter melt occur. The importance of this relationship is expected to increase in the future due to climate change. Overall, the article provides valuable insights into the factors affecting snow accumulation and the potential use of early season snowfall as a predictor. Rating: 8/10.
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS
(2023)
Article
Engineering, Civil
Ziwei Li, Wei Ji Leong, Michael Durand, Ian Howat, Kylie Wadkowski, Bidhyananda Yadav, Joachim Moortgat
Summary: In recent years, there has been rapid progress in the use of fully convolutional neural networks (FCN) for classifying optical satellite imagery. This study develops a super-resolution FCN that combines the spatial resolution of commercial satellite imagery with the spatiotemporal coverage of public satellite imagery. The model achieves over 90% classification accuracy at meter-scale resolutions and can be retrained for other segmentation tasks.
JOURNAL OF HYDROLOGY
(2023)
Article
Geochemistry & Geophysics
Yuna Duan, Caglar Yardim, Michael Durand, Kenneth C. C. Jezek, Joel T. T. Johnson, Alexandra Bringer, Shurun Tan, Leung Tsang, Mustafa Aksoy
Summary: Ice sheet internal temperature is crucial for glacier dynamics, but there are limited in situ measurements. This article presents the design of ultra-wideband software-defined microwave radiometer (UWBRAD) and its potential for estimating internal ice sheet temperature. Simulation studies demonstrate the feasibility of achieving science goals in retrieving ice sheet temperature profiles.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON GEOSCIENCE AND REMOTE SENSING
(2022)
Review
Water Resources
Gabrielle J. M. De Lannoy, Michel Bechtold, Clement Albergel, Luca Brocca, Jean Christophe Calvet, Alberto Carrassi, Wade T. Crow, Patricia de Rosnay, Michael Durand, Barton Forman, Gernot Geppert, Manuela Girotto, Harrie-Jan Hendricks Franssen, Tobias Jonas, Sujay Kumar, Hans Lievens, Yang Lu, Christian Massari, Valentijn R. N. Pauwels, Rolf H. Reichle, Susan Steele-Dunne
Summary: The rapid growth of land surface satellite data and model sophistication in the 21st century has opened up new opportunities for estimating multiple components of the water cycle through satellite-based land data assimilation. However, the increased level of detail in models and data also presents challenges in terms of dimensionality and the volume of observations to assimilate. Advanced data assimilation methods and efficient solutions are needed to address these challenges.
FRONTIERS IN WATER
(2022)
Review
Geography, Physical
Leung Tsang, Michael Durand, Chris Derksen, Ana P. Barros, Do-Hyuk Kang, Hans Lievens, Hans-Peter Marshall, Jiyue Zhu, Joel Johnson, Joshua King, Juha Lemmetyinen, Melody Sandells, Nick Rutter, Paul Siqueira, Anne Nolin, Batu Osmanoglu, Carrie Vuyovich, Edward Kim, Drew Taylor, Ioanna Merkouriadi, Ludovic Brucker, Mahdi Navari, Marie Dumont, Richard Kelly, Rhae Sung Kim, Tien-Hao Liao, Firoz Borah, Xiaolan Xu
Summary: Seasonal snow cover plays a significant role in the Earth's climate and water supply, but its decline and the lack of global SWE estimates pose challenges to water resource management and other applications. This paper reviews the potential of X- and Ku-band SAR for global SWE monitoring and discusses the interdisciplinary approach needed for accurate estimation.
Article
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
Melissa L. Wrzesien, Sujay Kumar, Carrie Vuyovich, Ethan D. Gutmann, Rhae Sung Kim, Barton A. Forman, Michael Durand, Mark S. Raleigh, Ryan Webb, Paul Houser
Summary: This study uses model calibration tools to improve snow simulations in the Noah-MP LSM, resulting in more accurate spatial estimates of snow water equivalent and runoff. The calibrated simulations show better agreement with observed data and improved timing of snowmelt. Additionally, spatially distributed calibrated parameters outperform default uniform values.
JOURNAL OF HYDROMETEOROLOGY
(2022)